


love and sleep

by apsaraqueen



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Implied Senshi/Shitennou, Modern Era, Senshi & Shitennou Mini Bang 2018, Shitennou, Silver Millennium Era, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-08-20 13:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16556765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apsaraqueen/pseuds/apsaraqueen
Summary: Hino Rei takes on the task of rebuilding Hikawa Jinja, and other things.





	1. late in winter

**Author's Note:**

> For [elianthos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elianthos/pseuds/elianthos), who has created the most incredible [artwork](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16557836) for this fic - I am most definitely not worthy.
> 
> Written for the [Senshi & Shitennou Mini-Bang 2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SSMB_2018). Thank you to the glorious, hardworking mods who made this event happen, and let me submit an unfinished (by a long shot) work!
> 
> I had every intention of finishing this fic, and then it spawned into a (likely) 50,000 word epic. It happens, right? Definitely to be edited, and, er, proofread, and all those good things. And yes, to be very much continued.

_Lying asleep between the strokes of night_  
_I saw my love lean over my sad bed,_  
_Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,_  
_Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,_  
_Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,_  
_But perfect-coloured without white or red._  
_And her lips opened amorously, and said –_  
_I wist not what, saving one word – Delight –_  
_And all her face was honey to my mouth,_  
_And all her body pasture to my eyes;_  
_The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,_  
_The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,_  
_The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs  
_ _And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire._

-A.C. Swinburne, _Love and Sleep_

 

**love and sleep**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The secret of Rei’s composure was that she was rarely surprised. Like all solitary children, to watch and listen at a distance came naturally. Early on she had taught herself to read the signs: a kettle sighing, snap or snarl of the Fire, the specific weight of air before a downpour. How some patterns repeated, bones dying like old wood in both her mother’s and grandfather’s hands; how others lacked precedent, the honden’s walls shivering months before its roof caved to snowmelt. In this way she had learned to sidestep the unexpected like others avoided sidewalk cracks. You could not be surprised by anything if you had conceded everything. 

The priestess stood at the top of the ladder, halfway through the hole in the roof. The tarp she was nailing in around the edges would not last the wet season, but she thought it would not need to. It was only a temporary measure to protect the kami within from the elements, their calm gilt visage, until fresh beams could be laid. Above her the March sky was a pale bowl overturned; there was time before the rains. Below her was the dark of the shrine’s sanctum. And him.

She had become conscious of him slowly, an unfurling in her like tea flowers. By the time she was certain, it was too late to acknowledge his presence, so she didn’t. She went on, hammering loud from the ceiling, while he leaned in the honden entrance, watching her wordlessly. Rei stood with her back to him because she was not surprised.

When the floor creaked she spoke without pausing.

“No. Don’t come inside.”

The noise stopped.

“Sure you don’t need a hand?” it floated up to her, conversational.

“I’m sure,” said Rei.

“You might take down that sign outside,” he observed. “The one about the shrine’s restoration.”

She remembered that she had chained and locked the gate last night. Grimly she drove in the last nail. “Did you miss where it said the shrine is closed to the public?”

The pause that followed was prolonged, tolerant.

The priestess ducked her head inside, where the dimness made it hard to see, and swiftly knew herself at disadvantage.

She drew breath. “J – ”

“Junin,” he supplied. “Or Jude, I answer to either.”

Privately she thought that was ridiculous, especially in his Japanese – which was native, though she couldn’t place the accent. She came down a step, two, then halted.

“How long,” she said. “Where have you – what have you been – ” she stopped immediately, hearing the sound of her own voice.

“Come down here,” he said softly, as if coaxing a cat from a tree, “then we’ll talk.”

This alarming proposal she ignored out of hand. “Why are you here?”

His shape, silhouetted by daylight, shifted. “You don’t seem so sure that I am.”

One second to the next. It leaped without warning, fire filling her hands. She had to grip the ladder to conceal her trembling. His expression was in shadow, but the memory, a cool offensiveness in the eyes, was what she saw.

“Tell me or get out,” she said, with effort.

“I’ll do whatever you ask.” 

She almost laughed. “What do you want?”

“To help,” said the stranger.

There was no trace of mocking in it. Rei stared at his outline. 

“You imagined you? – could help me?”

“I didn’t imagine anything,” he answered, low. “I didn’t dare.”

In the long seconds, she felt her shoulders fall bit by bit from where they had been, humped like an animal’s spine.

Rei looked up as a breeze muttered into the break, lifted her hair stuck to her nape. The sky glared. The fluttering of the half-nailed tarp stippled him in light and shadow; in the corner of the eye he was almost illusory.

She was thinking of when she’d once locked herself out of the shrine. How she pushed, bruised her fists against the gate. Just when she gave up and leaned on it in exhaustion – it was opened from the other side. She had stumbled, fallen inside, dizzy from excess effort. It was that dizziness now; she felt it swim in her ears and swayed briefly.

When she looked down again, her vision was hazy, adjusting from light to dark; Junin had entered against her warning. It was his grip steadying the ladder. Their hands touching the same metal, ancillary to touching each other.

As Rei descended the honden came into view. Chigi and katsuogi from the roof littered like chicken bones. The tatami were threadbare, floorboards showing through. The faded kami were telegraphing to each other discreet, closed smiles. Likely they felt this her comeuppance.

“As you can see,” she faced him, careful in her space, “there’s plenty to be done.”

“Let me help you.”

The proximity of his voice jerked her like a puppet. “Have you done this kind of work before?” she demanded.

He was coming into focus. His shoulders lifted, dropped in a shrug. “Never.”

Up close he was more solid and taller than her guess, her eyes lined up with the top of his breastbone. Sparkling from where he had washed at the temizuya. She thought it was not a courtesy one would see from a foreigner, if he were one. The silver on his mouth and hands. She couldn’t help but look.

Junin stood patiently under her inspection. His eyes were the same acute blue, but his hair was cropped to the skull. She could stretch her palm and feel its velvet; she could leave a print of fire on his throat. Going by the amusement clear in his features, he knew the options under consideration. 

She located her voice. “You expect me to pay someone without experience?”

“All I need is a place to stay.”

The priestess reared back. “You want to _live_ here?”

“I won’t be underfoot,” his eyes were laughing, “unless that’s where you want me.”

“Not possible,” she bit off. “We don’t have a lot of living space. Only my room and – the former priest’s.”

Dust motes floated aimless in the light where they stood.

“It’s up to you,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her stumble. 

All the muscles of his face were held in place; she studied the planes of them without a word. She had assumed him sure of his welcome, but looking close, she saw he was still awaiting it. It was not too late to tell him to go.

The priestess had already stepped past him, making for the honden entrance. Outside the sun puddled on the cobblestones, weak and white as rice-washing water. Shading her eyes she noticed crow droppings maning the stone guardians; their lion-dog faces looked at her resentfully. As she walked by, Phobos gave an innocent caw.

Between her footfalls and breaths were his, an echo in the quiet of the courtyard. His presence was a physical pressure at the back of her neck. There was a change in how she moved, supposing she was not alone. It had occurred to her that she could touch him but she wasn’t sure what it would prove. He could still be a ghost of her making.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trouble was, her grandfather liked to say, ghosts didn’t wait for a date like Obon to come back. To hear him tell the story, the dead were not so much gone forever as they were on a sort of indefinite sabbatical. They were drawn to the living like mothwings beating the lantern; they could leave but unpredictably they would return, like certain comets or relatives dropping in every few years. When Rei was very young and balked at sweeping steps, he would chide her. Girl, how is your mother to recognize her home?

“Sounds like a good way to get a kid to do their chores,” said Mamoru.

“You would say that,” muttered Rei.

It was a few days after her grandfather’s period of mourning had ended; Mina had cajoled her into a yukata for the Obon fireworks. Leaving the shrine after fifty days, the priestess had hung by the gate for a full minute, watching the overloud traffic and passerby. She could not have guessed how much it would feel like a relinquishing of the world outside.

They were flopped on the hillside, taking in the display above. The warm dusk drifted with thick clouds of smoke and shouts of festival-goers. All the other girls had gone as entourage to Usa, glowing with beer and desperate to find a kakigori seller. The two of them stayed to guard the blankets and coolers.

She didn’t think she had drunk very much, despite Haruka surreptitiously refilling all their cups, but perhaps the heat of the day had gotten to her. When she turned her head to him fireworks burst behind her eyelids in miniature.

“Mamoru,” she said. “You really don’t believe in ghosts?”

“Scientifically? No.”

She scoffed. “Because so much of what’s happened to us can be explained by science.”

A belated rumbling above them; ash fell into her, their hair. He had turned his head to her too. The look in his eyes was disconcertingly familiar.

“I think, when someone goes, it’s best to let them,” he said. “If you can.”

She blinked at him a few times, fast. Then she broke his gaze to stare up at the night. By her elbow was her forgotten cup. She sipped, a little more, then drained the sake.

In no time the drink evened in her blood, a pleasant rush unmetered by any clock. The beating drums, hawkers’ shouts, and giggling children joined in unison. Rockets sprayed orange-yellow-purple flowers overhead. The air was richly perfumed: grass, sulfur, and fried tempura, like the feasts her grandfather laid out for her mother’s homecoming.

The thought struggled to surface, fighting through a shimmer of oil. For a weightless moment, she had almost forgotten, or stopped remembering. There was a difference.

“...check on Usa,” he was saying.

“May I ask you a question?”

“You just did.”

Rei waved a hand to disperse this impudence. It seemed to move with somber grace, a blackness over the fount of stars. 

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “About letting go. Any of them.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look at your stones. Spirits. Whatever you think they are,” she mused on that a moment, “only you can talk to them.”

“That’s not a question.” His chin had thrust out stiffly.

“If that’s so, how do you know he’s – ” she stopped, restarted. “How do you know it’s real?”

Another boom above, a shock of light. A strangeness in Mamoru’s expression, come and gone before she could name it.

“I don’t,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the waning half of night she woke from an unrelated dream and reflected blankly that she should have phoned Mamoru before. But when Rei tried his number he didn’t answer; though he was on call, she knew that much. She let the old landline beep smally in her grasp as she stared at the screen door. On it swayed the shadows of maples, unfamiliar to her, in her grandfather’s room.

For all she had laundered the linens after the funeral, his smell of starch and cypress was there; her chest seemed to expand endlessly to contain it. When she turned her head to the side, the pillow was damp, for what she hardly knew. The old wound still troubling her and now a fresh one tender as peeled fruit. She slotted a palm under her wet cheek while she thought about it. The – guest in her room, what he wanted. What ghosts wanted of the living.

She flung her legs over the side of the futon and went there. Her room was at the other end of the hall. The door was open. Approaching from this angle, in three-quarters profile, she could see her few things undisturbed: paper-shaded lamp in the corner, slippers by the closet. The low table where she kept nothing, just so. Rei halted a moment before seeing more.

Hikawa Jinja had never held more than two occupants at a time; when she came to live here she had been aware this was her mother’s old room. On that low table they had sometimes placed a tray heaped with raw rice and water, so her spirit wouldn’t have to hunt her meal at the home altar. When it remained untouched Rei used to think it meant the offering was not to her mother’s liking.

He lay with an arm flung overhead, long fingers flexed outward, grasping. Asleep his face was unguarded. She observed the wide mouth downturned, lines carved down to his jaw, heaviness under the eyes. When she leaned in the doorway, echo of the honden, he murmured unintelligibly. He slept light. All this she remembered about him.

The moon was coming in full so it made no shape on the floor; rather it laid the room open and lambent like oyster shell. All the corners plainly visible, without darkness anywhere. She looked on him a while, taking her fill, thinking. Almost by accident she noticed near Junin’s hand was the water glass she had left him. Beads strung the rim and pooled beneath; it had been drunk to the last drop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What might she have done, meeting one of her ghosts? She had never gotten so far in the story. When she was young she had pictured her mother showing her the use of the baffling objects left in her room, hair curler and pressed powder, instinctively hidden from her grandfather’s view. Sometimes she imagined running into him in the hall, he inquiring after her plans for the shrine. The edges lit like camera flare. She could have asked. What they would do, in her place.

Now that _he_ was here for her to ask anything, all her questions seemed to close off her windpipe. She thought of what they had been to each other and it shrank her. He seemed to carry it so easily, but that too was only a story: where the moon touched him she’d seen its weight like poured silver. The same memories she carried, the same density, the same texture. Perhaps that was what the living wanted of ghosts. What she had wanted, without even knowing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When she woke late and went to the kitchen, she found Junin already there, staring out the screen door. Motionless but for his shoulders rising and falling, the steady roll of his breath.

As she joined him he glanced at her briefly. “Sleep well?”

Rei folded her arms in her robe, against the seeping chill, and considered this.

“Tell me something,” she said suddenly. “Why ask if you already know?”

The kitchen faced the evergreen trees, morning coming in diffuse jade. Even in the boiling months it was cool and cavelike here. On his face the light played like water, shivering.

“Small talk,” he said.

She was certain she had misheard. “What?”

“It’s when – ”

“I know what small talk is.”

His features bland, like a coin’s back. “It’s polite. And passes the time.”

“I can think of better ways,” said Rei crisply.

“Well,” he said casually, “so can I, but they’re not so polite.”

The laugh burst from her, she couldn’t help it. As she did it she saw she had astonished him more than herself, and this made her laugh harder. Her chest ached as if out of tune.

Junin was watching her now, not the leaves outside. Not speaking. The priestess pushed the heel of her hand into her damp eyes, useless. Likely he thought her unhinged.

“Look,” out of breath and her side in a stitch, she rested her forehead on the cold glass, “I mean to start in the courtyard this week.” She gestured at the decadence of balsams before them. “Pruning, weeding, planting. All this should be done before the rains start.”

“Before Obon.”

“With this overgrowth the shrine can’t be seen from the road. I’m not even sure how you found – ” her mouth snapped shut on this idiocy. He would be familiar with that road.

If he heard her slip, he let it pass. “And the honden?”

“After.” Rei had conjured the calendar, was apportioning days. “The tarp will do if I nail it in. For the next few weeks.”

Junin leaned a shoulder on the door. “Let me.”

“I can manage,” she said coolly.

“Obviously.” He folded his arms across his chest; they were gold-furred, dark from sun. More than could be had in Japan in winter. “But I told you I want to help. I meant it.” 

Her chin lifted. “And when you said you’d do whatever I asked?”

In budding dismay she watched the lazy curve of his mouth. 

“I meant that, too,” he said.

Red had started to bloom on her cheeks. She resisted the urge to press her hands over them, instead turned to go, spine straight.

“Good,” the priestess issued evenly over her shoulder, long dark hair proving a useful curtain. “Then you can make tea.”

His low huff of laughter followed her out.

She bathed until her fingers emerged like raisins. An armful of clothes piled in her grandfather’s room, yanked from her dresser at random yesterday. From it she pulled her oldest jeans and the mens’-sized Harvard sweatshirt Usagi had forgotten years ago; by now all of them had one, save Mamoru. At one point she caught herself searching for the stick of kohl Minako had left, stopped aghast, and in disgust severely braided her damp hair out of the way.

Back in the kitchen, he had been busy. Clouds were forming above the kettle. She recognized the smell of the (likely expired but he was already drinking it) instant coffee they kept for guests. On the table were all manner of foodstuffs: pickles from the back of the fridge, peach jelly candies, spicy curry-flavored chips, a forgotten and now dessicated tangerine. The priestess passed her fingers over the things piled like a feast. Belatedly she realized she was starving.

“This is…” she trailed off.

“This is the diet of a fraternity pledge,” Junin pushed her chipped cup across the table, piping even to her fingertips. He was already sitting on a rickety chair he’d pulled up, so she did as well. “There’s nothing else. We should go shopping.”

“I’ve never heard of – whatever that frat-thing is,” she decisively ignored this _we_. In truth she paid almost no attention to what she ate; of late she dined on stale rice crackers and tea. “But I can buy food if you tell me what you want.”

“Sure.” He bit into a pickled radish. His teeth were like an advertisement. “We’ll split it.”

“You’re a guest,” she dismissed, and then to unbalance him, asked, “Why Jude?”

She was thinking of it again, his expression earlier, when she’d laughed. His eyes moving over her with a startled, intent precision.

But this time he only grinned as if he were expecting it. “My dad. Beatles fan.”

“I’m – not sure I understand that either.” It was mortifying that until he said this she hadn’t considered the probability of his having parents. “These are American things.”

“The Beatles were British,” coffee drained, he went for the chips, “and I’m only half.”

“Half what?”

“American." More chips crunched. "I was born in Okinawa. That’s the provincial accent you’re scrunching your nose at, by the way.”

Rei lifted her cup, blew on it a little, steam hiding her flush.

“Go on.” Her guest sat back; the chair protested. “What else?”

She took a peach candy and began to open it. “Nothing.”

His grin had shifted. “Going to let me off easy?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I figured you’d have more questions.”

Rei exhaled. “I’m not – afraid of what you think I’m afraid of.”

Calmly, he said: “And what is that?”

She went on peeling the plastic from the jelly, flicking off bits of wrapper. Between them was a growing landfill: bags dregged with crumbs, empty foil packets. The same on their hands, shared dust of their meal.

The candy stuck sweetly to her fingers. With the water boiling the kitchen had gone warm and close; you could see where his hair would curl were it long enough. If you knew it would curl, if you were familiar.

“You’re in my house, aren’t you?” though it wasn’t a question, not anymore. “Sleeping in my room, eating my food. It should be enough for you.” Rei concentrated on the fogged screen door, deep green smudges of trees behind. “You don’t need to hear me say it.” 

In her periphery he was very still. Already she was recalling his unnerving lack of tics, how he conserved motion. It made it easy to see even his smallest movements, a telling shift in weight. His hand reaching for her.

Rei’s chair squealed on the floor as she sprang back, stood up. The tangerine rolled off the table. Under the kettle the flame surged hissing then died. His palm turned up before her like an offering tray, open and empty.

Junin was looking at his hand, coldly perplexed, as though it belonged to someone else.

“I’m sorry, that was – I’m sorry,” he said.

Into the ear-splitting hush, she said, “No. You’re not. And I let you come here and make small talk, tea – but.” She swallowed. “I won’t let you pretend to be safe, or – kind.”

“Pretending,” his voice held no particular inflection. “Is that what you think we’re doing?”

“It’s so unlike you it’s obvious,” she said tightly. “You keep asking. How I’m sleeping, what I’m afraid of, what I think. Not from compassion – to have the answers.” She might’ve imagined the slight flare of his nostrils. “And you don’t have the right, when you know as well as I do none of this,” she gestured around, “should be happening.”

“This is exactly what should have happened,” said Junin. “From the start. All this.”

“Why?” she demanded. “Would it’ve made any difference?”

He didn’t reply. He was still dispassionately focused on his palm, hanging between them. As she watched his fingers closed over one by one.

She shoved past him though he wasn’t in her way, straining for the courtyard, its unbreathed air.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They were lying in the near-night of his tent, every flap drawn to keep out the unthawed wind. It had risen while they slept then fallen, then came again strongly to batter the hide walls, and broke her wide awake. She had been listening a while and now it was going, only a sighing over the steppe grass.

It was very late, or early. Inside there was no discernible light but the black was softening apace. Outside, the birdcall he had told her meant dawn, here. She thought there was not much time left before she would need to slip away. By her was his shape, definite among the shadows. He had not stirred for hours.

When she felt among the furs for her clothes, his hand closed over hers neatly as a trap.

Mars ceased to move. “Don’t you sleep?”

She saw teeth flash, white in the dark.

“Sometimes,” said Jadeite. “But you didn’t come to me for sleep.”

There was no real response for this; it was not particularly deniable. “I have to leave.”

“Wait,” his grip tightened. Easily she could break it, he knew. “You’ve never been more than a night. Stay a little longer.” His fingers flattened to hers. “Be here, with me.”

As he said it, in her palm she felt a fluttering, like something was trapped there.

She sat upright, not bothering with the blankets that slipped down to her waist. His hand covered hers like a jewelbox lid. When it fell away, movement caught her eyes.

“Oh!” in her other hand she made flame and brought it close, throwing the enclosure into fluctuating orange light. Intrigued, she inspected the thing’s tiny stiff claws, quivering arc of its tail. She twisted halfway to put both illusion and its maker in her sightline. “Is it a bird, too?”

“Scorpion,” he said. “I used to chase them when I was small.”

In firelight he was the same color all over: skin stretched tight over the slow-expanding cage of ribs; curls loose on his head, down his front, between his legs. He looked like an object for diversion someone had set down, the gold-mask with much patina or the carved flat of a blade. It was a subtle irony that pleased her. She thought he looked, for once, like what he was.

“You’re smiling,” he observed.

“I am.” She didn’t elaborate. “Is it dangerous?”

“Why do you think so?” 

“It looks fierce,” she had decided, “and,” she slanted him a look, “I know you.”

“Maybe you haven't met many small boys,” his tone was idle, “but on the whole, they’re remarkably dim.”

“Do they outgrow it?”

He opened his mouth, then shut it, looking thoughtful. “I can never tell when you’re joking.”

“Maybe I never am,” her lashes dropped. “Were you hurt?”

“Oh, often. But no one stopped me.” His court diction had stretched to the drawl he used among his own people. Some boyhood argot which they liked; she didn’t doubt he kept it partly for effect. His face was very relaxed. “Maybe they thought I’d learn. Not to touch what I shouldn’t.”

A few bright strands fell loose as she bent forward.

“Did you?” she murmured. “Learn?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He had lifted a hand, pushing back her hair. His fingers lingered there at her neck, the heat like a shock or a luxury, sharply abundant on her skin. Through his lashes, flat to the bones of his cheeks, she saw a brief flicker.

“You tell me,” he said.

She could feel the withholding in his fingers, the firm lightness of his touch. It was far from the usual urgency that bound them, hands snarling on the closures of each other’s clothes, the roughness she sometimes pushed him to. Her pulse eager beneath.

As the silence filled up its brim, she tilted her cheek in his palm.

They remained like that, only breathing, warming the air with it. Their shadows melded inextricably on the hide walls, run together like drops of water adjacent. Her gaze drew there, those shadow-selves joined with such absoluteness, not even light between.

“Is that how you learned illusion,” she turned her wrist to let the scorpion climb atop. Her voice steadied. “Playing your games, with things like this.”

He didn’t seem to feel the bite of her words. “They are games, in a way." His eyes were long, slivered. "But there are no rules in it; you learn your opponent. Even a creature like this. Its pleasures, defenses.” He let his hand fall away from her, thumb easing over her temple. His voice had dipped like the bottom string of a harp. “What the mind wants to be real.”

The scorpion was pickily mincing along her knuckles. Its body luminously showed the innards like in amber; the legs rubbing together sounded of twigs. Up close there was a warm pungency that made her nose twitch. She had the urge to stroke it, then before she could correct the impulse, thought of the danger. But it was only illusion.

It stared past her blank-eyed. She put the thumb of that hand to its claw. Even that was right, how it resisted her touch. It didn’t crumple cheaply like paper or evaporate like smoke, as the puffed tricks made by charlatans on feast days did. She thought its tail might lash her skin and she’d feel the sting as strongly as if it were real.

She parted her lips; it slipped out soft. "And what it doesn't want."

The fire snapped high, erratic. In her hand the scorpion scrabbled diligently; behind them its shadow reared enormous.

"That's what you use illusion for," she said gently, eyes on her hand. “Not – this.”

He was sprawled prone. His eyes were closed.

"Are you asking?"

Nothing had changed in the languor of his tone; it was a knife thrown up, weightless at the apex. She had seen him do it, that toss and catch, effortless. Likewise she had been taught to make fire in her hand without burning it. She had been thinking it awhile. These were all games for children and they had not outgrown them, only grown to learn their use. 

She said, "With this you can – "

"I can," he said.

"You do."

He said nothing.

Her palms closed as if in prayer; this time there was no resistance. She took up her clothes – on her other side all along – and went out of the tent.

She had thought the gale died down but as soon as she straightened it struck her with all the force of a blow. She made her way to the edge of the bluff where they were, not ten paces from the tent, where she could see the grasses made flat below. It would have been better if she knelt, made herself less of a target, but she stood. Her hair whipped like signal fire.

The wind was continuous now, ice to skin, the pang before it numbed you. She looked out over the chapped vastness, steppe furred silver, the chilled flat of sky. There were features, here and there, swellings of earth, squat twisted trees. She thought of the young animals taking shelter in those places, bodies drawn close for heat and what open-mouthed softness they played at, delaying what they would do with teeth later. That time for love and sleep before they rose yawning for the hunt.

She had come out intending to leave but she understood it was pointless, that she could be here with him or a thousand leagues gone and nothing would change. There wasn’t anything she didn’t know, inside or outside, it was only the clarity she wanted. The violence of wind on her naked face, of his touch when she sounded it from him. That oneness.

“We were pretending,” she was shivering, “and that – that was all.”

He had come up by her still fastening his tunic, which was heavy-made and would’ve been warm closed. Over his back was a pelt, as if this helped matters; she was afforded glimpses of his sternum whenever a gust hit. He didn’t seem to care. She didn’t know if it was all his people or only him who was so assiduously without shame.

“Take care how you go,” he said lightly. He made no attempt to touch her. “There is worse, out there.”

It was – nonsense. She was sickened of it. Her teeth bared to the cold.

“Like – what? Scorpions?”

“Like us," he answered.

He was smiling, but she saw that it was wrong, amused and helpless. His gaze was far-off on the gray sky and grayer plain; she might as well not have been there. She wrapped her arms tight around herself, noting as she did his were loose at his sides.

“Us,” he mused, almost to himself, “we are worse out there.”

“You – I – ”

But it wasn’t just them, it was everything: beasts asleep in the boreal land, their hot breath and bristling fur. The land treated them as it did its own because they were a part of it; they were a part of it.

She contemplated that for a moment.

“We can’t change it,” she told him. Her hair welted her cheek. “It’s what we are.”

She watched him close his eyes, a few moments, taking in himself the attenuated air. His profile was so pure she thought again this place couldn't have birthed him.

"Then in here," he said, finally, "we'll pretend."

"To be what." But she knew.

Jadeite's face had turned to hers; it was remote and bright as a star.

“Better," he said.

She looked away. Her hand reached out blindly, closed by convulsion over his.

They stood there and listened to the wind that didn’t stream past but butted them ungently as though warning them back, had wanted from the beginning but that they stay in. They might have been the first to see the coming of the season, or the last to see one gone by. Who could say which? Perhaps, she thought, stunned, they could.

She couldn't have said how long they were there. The sky had lightened to pearl. Somewhere behind the sun moved; shades of clouds herded over the steppe. The cold had moved on, or hadn’t, it was just where they touched. Chasing up her arm, their arms, wood put to fire. As her grip shifted she felt it between them: that heat, from within.

“Let’s,” she said. “Let’s go back inside.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ultimately she thought better of garden work and went instead to run errands with only a hazy idea of what required doing. Anyone could have told her this was a tactical error. Four shops in, Rei had purchased a number of things she was not sure she needed. Among them was a tin of instant coffee, which she didn’t drink, and asparagus onigiri, the only flavor she could find. She resolutely did not think of who would consume either of these.

Early dusk, she came back to the shrine with her arms full of odds and ends. It had been a long day of walking, but still on impulse she took a roundabout way to the living quarters, following the prayer circuit, stopping again by the honden. The handles of overloaded bags reddening her hands. In the long hush, the priestess looked at the walls rising with the dignity of a fossil, which it was now apparent required a will more dogged than hers to keep up.

It was one of those timorous evenings, bloodless. In another time she would have come home to her grandfather seeding the first herbs. He would scrape off on his robes, she would put down her things, and they’d sit on the steps to watch night coming on. In another time she _had_ watched from that bluff in reverse, dawn paling to this luster. Rei had kept her head down in her tasks all afternoon not glancing up but now, here, with the wound in her roof still open to the wind, she had to see it.

It struck her that all the people coming from the office were seeing this sky in glimpses between buildings, overpasses, looking up from phones, and after all it was nothing to them or to anyone without memory – wanted or not – attached. She thought of the moonlight on Junin’s taut brow, and wondered if this sky was what he, too, remembered. The feeling rose up in her like a sudden craving; it seemed like something she should have known.

When she went in she closed the door carefully and dropped the bags without sound. It was a vestige of those last days when she had been anxious for an old man’s sleep; alone she hadn’t been able to break the habit. Without switching on the lights she made her way through the corridor skimming hands over the woven grain of the walls. She was sockfooted, but like the imperial castles Hikawa Jinja could have been built to deter invaders, and some floorboards chirped.

The priestess passed with quickening steps her bedroom where the futon had been folded, to the kitchen where the dishes were washed and stacked. All the wrappers thrown out. Her tea things were out but the coffee mug had been put away like he knew she had no use for it. It was at that point Rei thought to pause and judge the grade of the silence, with which she was well-versed. What she heard was breakable as glass; the slightest thing dropped would do. The radiator serenely spat steam. She listened and knew herself alone; he had gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What she had wanted to tell him about pretending was it was just that – pretending. There was no satiety to be had, fooling the mind with that thinness. You could never fully drink it with your eyes or taste it with your tongue, and after it was gone you were still empty. You were carved out worse than before, now what was real couldn't content you. It couldn’t do anything to make anyone whole.

She remembered how she had gripped his hand white-knuckled and unthinking as if that would keep them safe. They could have done anything and the end would have been the same, or not, it might have changed everything. Who knew? A story could become real, perhaps, but not in a lifetime, or even a hundred of them.

Remembering was its own kind of pretending, its own story. It needed no illusionist. What you remembered was part of you, called back as though it had never left. Like putting your hand in deep water and seeing it cut off at the wrist. One sense perceived severance when the rest told you otherwise. At any time she could close her eyes; her skin would remember if she let it. She did. It did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I brought the drill,” said Makoto when Rei opened the door after the umpteenth knock, later that night. It was becoming apparent the chained and locked gate would do little to keep anyone of supernatural athleticism or determination (or both) from crossing the shrine grounds. “The one you asked me for last week. Don’t tell me that’s dinner.”

The priestess looked down at her tangerine, peel coming off like woodchips, dented on one side.  Its introduction to her floor had done it no favors.

“I’m not very hungry." On cue her stomach made an unhappy noise.

Her friend muttered something about politicians' daughters who couldn’t lie their way out of sopping paper bags. “Neither am I, looking at that." She tilted her head, pretty features gone sly. On her the expression was improbable. "Want Thai?”

They walked around the corner and put in a large order of drunken noodles for sharing; without asking Makoto requested extra chili packed in how Rei liked it. They doled out portions into the scratched melamine bowls and bent their heads to the steam. They were cooling their tongues with iced lime tea when the other woman spoke.

“So, how is it going,” she began, “the restoration.”

“It’s going.”

“Do you want any help?”

Rei shook her head. “I have – I had someone helping. It’s better that I handle it.”

“You know best,” said Makoto. “Though it’s a lot. Rebuilding – and all.”

The priestess glanced up and saw it: her brow creased soft with recognition. Like Mamoru’s scrutiny under the fireworks, the same barren set of association. Dipping her gaze back to her bowl, Rei stirred the noodles in their neon soak of oil, and thought she was not the only one who wanted ghosts.

“Thank you,” she said clearly, when the waitress took away their dishes.

Across the table her friend blinked, roused herself with a minuscule shake. Rei felt their knees bumping underneath, the other woman’s legs eating most of that space. “Are you planning to just make repairs? Or will you change things around? Oh, excuse me, do you guys have a dessert menu?”

Four mochi stuffed with ice cream arrived with dispatch. Rei had little to no appetite left but she took the one that appeared to be green tea-flavored, then felt vaguely displaced when it was revealed as pistachio instead. Expecting a bitter taste and instead voluptuous on the roof of her mouth.

They spoke, then, of building techniques and construction, Makoto having had extensive experience with her café. They spoke of the correct wood to buy for the honden roof, the best drills on the market (at which juncture Rei ordered herself more tea), the irredeemable cheapness of contractors, the time to plant various cuttings, the gutters leaking snowmelt still. Through it all the priestess had an odd sense of making plans for someone else, another person at this table, perhaps herself, once. These were things she would have budgeted for, in the shrine ledgers for the new year.

Another year it would have been frugal giddiness over smart doorknobs that didn’t come off when twisted, and the right sheen for eggshell paint. These were conversations to shore up a home, an idea of spring Rei couldn’t imagine. It was too far ahead in the story. It still looked and felt like winter.

“But there's a bright side, don't you think,” blurted Makoto around a bite of raspberry mochi.

Rei lifted her eyes from her bowl. “There is?”

“I mean." She had gotten uncomfortable. Her cheeks tinged as the mochi. "Just, no one knows the place like you, right? And of course it's in terrible shape right now, but. When it breaks down you can remember. How the roof used to look or where the urn should go.” Her friend had given up on her dessert, hopelessly melted and oozing pink around her bowl, was fishing in the goo with great focus. She was losing her words. “Maybe you can make it like it was. Or better. Either way you can – make it real – again.”

“Not better,” murmured Rei.

“Sorry?”

“Nothing,” she turned her head. Outside the street-level window where they sat, cars of salarypeople driving home flashed by, sudden and wet-seeming blue and red halos. She wondered if Junin was somewhere like this, with Mamoru or someone else, a woman, sharing a beer, another, returning to his room and bed, alone or not. If he was in the same place as her or some place altogether different. It was completely dark, the sky like any other now. Tensely she allowed herself to think of going back to the shrine.

"Know what I mean?" the other woman's voice brought her from her thoughts.

The bill was placed before them, the plastic tray clacking down.

There was nothing but icewater in her glass but Rei took it up anyway. The cold felt on her teeth familiar. Her temples hurt from it. “It’s getting late, you bake early. You should go.”

“Thanks, you’re right. I don't have cash, what app do you – oh, for – you _still_ use that landline, don’t you?”

“What I meant was I’m paying,” she answered evenly. “Politician's daughter and all that.”

Makoto laughed, delighted.

“I’ll get the next one,” she said. “Hey, who did you say had been helping you?”

When she came home there was a voicemail from Mamoru, a tiny orange light that filled the kitchen with a peculiar glow. Rei set her hand on the receiver, thinking. She lifted, then put it down.

Once in her grandfather’s room all of the day fell on her eyelids with an insistent pressure like dipping her head in the bath. She had barely set the futon before she was taken by profound sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next day, the lifeless sky had given way to cuspate blue. A few clouds daubed, as if someone had tried to use all their paint, glutted rich white. The sun dazzled irregularly between them. On the air meandered a sweetness.

When she went out to inspect the situation in the garden she was nonplussed to find growth on the late-budding maple branches splayed like spider limbs. There was more. Weeds coming up prodigiously from piles of chunked plaster; one or two yellow flowers between the stones. Mint planted last year had gone rogue, found the beds all but unoccupied (her fault, entirely), and settled in for the long game. A particularly grasping patch puffed up near the path; she had knelt and was uprooting it when a shadow fell across her.

The jolt went all the way to her fingertips, thrill of pain like missing a stair. That was its nature, she supposed dimly, surprise. There was nothing she could have done to douse the spark that had lit in her, ungovernable.

His shape contorted, a duffel slung over. Canvas hitting concrete. He was already talking. “This has the basics, shirts, razor, that kind of thing. It got past midnight so I stayed where I was. I figured I'd wake you coming in late."”

Without looking up, she said, unnecessarily, “You’re back.”

She heard an unzipping, leather jacket shucked. It fell in a heap on his bag; his shoes stepped over. "Where else would I be?"

Rei twined a stem around her finger twice, thrice. "Never mind."

By her Junin dropped fluidly to a crouch. She was conscious of the adjacency, clean musk coming off him. He wasn’t a big man for his height, the long-unfolding frame of a dancer. He exerted a similar control over it, but this close, she could see his pulse jerk.

For several minutes he didn’t say anything, only watched with apparent absorption, her grandfather’s work undone as it had to be. She continued easing out the roots, setting fragrant bunches aside for some use she didn’t yet know, until she saw his arm move.

“Stop,” he was about to pluck one of the isolated pea shoots, “those aren’t weeds.”

He didn’t stop or even falter. His thumb and forefinger caught the tiniest leaves between them. These he rubbed in the pads of his fingers, so gentle it was hardly a touch, the stalks leaking milk. A green pungency rose all around them, an awareness.

“You remember," she said.

Junin bypassed her question, which hadn’t been one.

“Are you angry?” he asked.

They could’ve been talking of anything. His voice lulled her as it had once in the glowing dark. Absently she flexed her cramped fingers. There was no getting the dirt out from her nails, blackening her palm with new lifelines. New words unearthed. She opened her mouth and they were there. She answered, “I tried to be.”

“But you didn’t know where to start." And it was nonsense again, but this time she knew what he meant. She had been thinking it too. These things they had done that spiraled upon themselves, doubled to no point of origin like the back of a snail, and here they were winding the nautilus, seeking the start of the end.

“I killed you,” she said, and couldn’t help but add, “twice.”

“You were right,” he told her.

“And I didn't want to,” she went on dully. “When you came I – thought you were a ghost.”

“You wish I were?”

“I wish I didn’t remember. What we did.”

“Them,” said Junin. “Not us.”

She said, low: “I wish we’d done – anything else.”

“Rei.” Her name held like that in his mouth she had to shut her eyes, against the unblunted edge of all his attention. “They didn’t know. What will we do?”

Her eyes opened to meet his.

They were glittering, dark with the sun behind. Light shining through the abbreviation of his hair so foreign to her the urge rose again to feel it for herself. She was aware of each of her muscles, gathering with anticipation. But his hands remained loosely crossed between his knees. The fingers of them curled, once, as if seeking something. Silently she reached for him.

Her fingertips found first the vein down his knuckle. She touched his palm, lines known to her. She touched the web of thumb and forefinger, sensitive on him, and glanced up to see his throat working. A sunburst scar on the wrist puckered and round. She touched this carefully asking nothing. She touched the whorls of his fingertips that had touched the leaves, and her.

At some point Rei had sat altogether in the soil and it smeared on her ankles, sleeves pushed to the elbows, her arms and her hands, and now his too. That deep alive smell. She looked at the earth with which she'd marked him. He didn’t move or speak but let her touch him as she wanted. They were quiet like children learning small tasks of the garden, the care of tenuous things.

“Can you ever make something like it was?” She didn’t know what she was saying, not really, but she knew that he was listening. “If you rebuild. Is it the same?”

A moment passed. Their fingers grazed and brushed like the budding branches above them. Like that they laced.

“I don’t know,” he said. Wonderment in his voice. “Should we try?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. spring of knowledge

He stayed in her room and she in her grandfather’s; no other arrangement was conceivable.

Unlike her grandfather she had little use for relics; she hadn’t replaced her mother’s Western-styled curtains or shellac box when they wore out. As a result her room was impersonal, easy to turnkey for a guest, and Junin had laughably few possessions, less than her. The signs he was there at all: phone plugged under the schoolgirl-perfect calligraphy she’d hung at her grandfather’s insistence, a duffel by the wall. The soft dent his body left in her futon when she passed in the hall early while he showered. Seeing it made her walk by faster.

Spring had come upon them all at once. The days still kept their chill as snow stubborn to melt but it was hardly noticeable since he and she labored through their end, arriving later, later. Most of the work was outside, pruning what grew fast, babying what sprouted slow. It meant they were often not in speaking distance, him where she bade him and her at a distance she judged safer. Occasionally they called out to each other across the courtyard to exchange a shovel or broom or rake. Their hands would meet and it was no longer strange.

She would’ve died before admitting it, but out of his sight, she studied him almost as compulsion. What he’d said was true: he wasn’t the same. Like transposed music there were similarities – the vagrant grin, his eyes, how he moved. His face was not as perfect in its symmetry but she found it more interesting. Mouth hooked left, lower lip startlingly full, long-nosed. The jaw solidified. She guessed this was the face Jadeite might’ve grown into, given the chance. She wondered what he thought when he looked at her. She felt his gaze often. When Rei caught him he didn’t avert it.

Other differences, or perhaps simple unknowns. She’d seen his uneasy sleep but it wasn’t the old alertness; down the hall she heard him muttering from surfaced dreams. If he woke tired she couldn’t tell. He did his meager laundry, scaled roofs to unchoke gutters, drank enough coffee to make her own heart stutter, flirted. Asa Junin didn’t know anything about gardening or housekeeping but followed instructions with a meekness worn like sheepskin. He observed everything. Soon she could trust him with fussily choreographed routines she’d done for years.

With a dim shock she understood there had not been an ordinary thing they had done together, and so it had never entered her mind what it might be like, being friendly. At no point had they been friends. It was the surrealness of living with some predator, recently amiable. They would pause dirty and exhausted to tear into katsu reheated from the convenience store. He made light conversation with little consequence: what to buy, where to keep supplies, unpressing granularities. After a few days had passed, it came to Rei that he could keep this up forever.

Nights she would retreat to her bathroom and rinse her mouth at the sink and still taste all the questions held behind her teeth. She thought of asking him tomorrow, the next day, the next. But there was no hurry. In this he was unchanged. He would wait.

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just at sunup she located him in what her grandfather had jokingly called the parlor, though really it wasn’t more than a few square jute cushions that seemed to have floated in and come to rest at random on the tatami. There was a low birch table, larger cousin to the one in her room, and an alcove in the corner holding an oil lamp of some forgotten antique. The walls were green pear-skinned. An expansive screen door of blond wood here faced east, and dawn.

He was propped by an elbow on a cushion; on the table was her grandfather’s desk drawer. They had taken it out last night searching for a copy of a copy of a blueprint Rei wanted to reference for the carpenter. That ancient scrap of paper was there as well as budgets for the shrine, and correspondence with insurers containing curter language than she had ever heard her grandfather speak. Junin was poring over these, steaming mug already beside.

“Have you decided about reinforcing the beam in the haiden,” he looked up. “It’ll help support the roof. I can try speaking to the contractor today.”

The priestess covered a prodigious yawn with her sleeve.

“You can try sleeping, nights.” At the infinitesimal lift of his eyebrow she swiftly course-corrected. “It’s a small house. You make noise, I – ”

It was too late. He was smiling.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m used to not sleeping much.”

Not knowing what to say, she nodded brusquely, went to the kitchen. Bleary she found the last serviceable teabag, then returned to the parlor, bergamot filling her nostrils.

Junin paused mid-inhale. “Out of green tea?”

“And other things.”

“I’ll get it after my run. You can have my coffee.” She must’ve made some repulsed face; amusement slid in his tone. “Don’t look at me like that, it’s not going to kill you.”

Rei knelt upon the cushion and scowled into the proffered mug. “It might.”

At some point Junin had bought proper beans and press; the stuff was strong as her father’s whiskey, and equally unpalatable. He was wincing too, sipping her Earl Grey. They traded again and their eyes caught hold of each other. She started to laugh; so did he. As the sound faded she stirred her tea, watching the water swish copper. Rising so quickly and completely, eagerness of smoke in a closed room.

“So this is him,” he broke her train of non-thought.

In his other hand he was holding a sepia photo, cream-rounded at the sides. It must have been taken before she was born; her grandfather’s back was straight and smile gleaming. Rei craned her neck. She looked at it a moment. She nodded.

She guessed it had slipped out while he was sorting through the floorplans. Under the documents in the drawer she now saw there were more pictures, faces tilting up to them in the screened morning light. Only a handful, fine as old lace, unbound.

“And here – ”

The photo was waterstained. “My mother. She was very beautiful. Everyone says.”

“You’re all her.” She’d got this before, as flattery or reminiscence, but to her ear he sounded neutral. The next flip deft as a card shuffle. “Not all. There’s your father.”

He held a newspaper clipping from a crowded press event. Her father positioned under Junin’s fingertip, conversing with several other councilors, a coattail of staffers falling behind. They were all dark-suited, uniformed. She squinted. “How can you tell?”

He didn’t answer. “Who’s this?”

Rei leaned over for a better look. At the right was Kaidou with his harried smile, hand hovering by her shoulder, presumably urging her forward. Now she could situate it: months before the Rain Tree debacle, Zoisite’s attempted avenging. Her younger self stared straight at the camera, dress high-necked and virginal, eyes like black ice.

“That’s his assistant,” she said.

She expected him to move on to the next photo but instead he regarded it speculatively.

“You’re, what, sixteen here?”

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen,” a thumb brushed over Kaidou’s wedding band. “Maybe he already knew.”

His voice had taken an opacity like fogged glass. “Knew what?”

Junin placed the clipping on the table, smoothing over the fragile creases.

“You were too old for him,” he said, “even then.”

She didn’t offer any outward reaction to this and he didn’t seem to expect it. Instead they continued to look at the picture as though more clues might found on searching. Already she was used to it, the words between them that lacked an obvious logic, like spread-out puzzle pieces. Taken from the drawers in her own head, shown to the light of a room, for the first time.

He was still sifting through the pile. More was there: pearl hairpins too old to be her mother’s, dyed paper like petals, frayed brocade. She hadn’t planned on letting him near anything so delicate. But she liked the way he handled these, unhurried, and absolutely without fear. Watching the things balanced lightly in his fingers she felt a blush rising under her robe.

She heard a low “Hey,” and her chin went up.

Junin was studying her now, with something nearing familiarity.

“Still with me?” he said.

Above their heads one of the pipes muttered. A square of tatami had gone rosy where the sun reached them. The tip of Rei’s nose was cool in the warming room. She lifted her cup and ran a fingertip around the glazed edge. She felt the place where his lips had been. On a whim, because he missed nothing, because she wanted to, she turned it how you did for tea ceremonies. She drank there.

Slowly the room dipped in light. Outside the trees were limned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Often she dreamt of her grandfather; no unusual way to meet ghosts. There were variations. Occasionally he came as the younger man from the photo, thick-mustached and full of industry. Mostly he was in his right age, fumbling with his cane, peering confused past the gate. Inevitable that the shrine was in a worse state than now, roofs growing grass. Or else it was that Rei had rebuilt everything, the hole in the honden sealed, gleaming timber. But as she ran to fetch him – she tripped, over tree roots between stones, over crystal spears finding new sky.

She woke from the dream again late. When she went to the parlor the screen door was open, night breeze scraping scent from the young leaves. In the alcove it whistled over the unlit lamp. He was sitting at the table’s edge with elbows resting on his knees. His face was eclipsed.

Rei didn’t even think before she snapped life to the lamp wick. Fire filled his eyes, a moment, before the pupils shrank, banking it.

“I keep thinking,” she confessed. “Of – everything. It’s hard to sleep.”

“Join the club.”

She snorted, or came close. Then she entered, leaned on the wall. Behind her back, her hands sought each other, twisting damply.

“I don’t know anything about you.”

“You know me better than anyone,” said Junin.

He fell silent so that she could hear quite clearly what he left unsaid: the reverse, also true. She watched the shadow of his jaw.

He wasn’t wearing more than a thin T-shirt, sweatpants; probably he was cold from the draft, from whatever woke him, hair spiking up his arms. The lamp doled out its light in a shallow puddle that just washed her slipper-toes. She noticed that his own feet lacked for arches. They were golden, and bare.

It was a part of him – odd to realize it – that she hadn’t yet seen, that soaked into her gradually as the lamp’s low warmth. It was another detail made familiar, known to her, the bright fact of him in this room, in her home; and not long ago it had been her grandfather sitting here, in place of this man of whom she had often dreamt. It would be like this now. One small revelation to the next, like roe bursting under her tongue, until his every detail was familiar. She would change and he would know her, while a ghost looked on puzzled from the outside.

The priestess reached up her robe sleeve, feeling the course of the vein, the wristbone.

“Both those things are true.” She hesitated a second before acknowledging it. “For you, and – for me, too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He had brought her to a place on the steppe where the grass gave pliant under her feet as though it had been made for it and the air smelled and tasted tender. Long stalks tickled her calves as she moved. She took short, halting steps, cautious even with his form behind her, shoulders bumping his chest as he urged her forward. She reached up, trying to pry his hands off her eyes.

“Be patient,” he commanded, but she heard teasing, underpinned. “We’re not far.”

Mars let him lead her one step further, then three, twelve, twenty. “I want to see.”

He took his hands away.

“Look,” he said.

Bright midday. It took a few moments of shading her eyes and blinking rapidly to see anything at all. Above the sky was drifting blue, skeins of cloud flung out lengthwise, sun unraveling soft loose radiance. A breeze, sharp. Wildflowers surrounded them, in every direction, every color. The vast field went straight to the horizon, in the distance unrolling to the hills like brilliant carpet, closer up the buds lolling on slim necks, swathes of perse and scarlet and dotted white. She had never seen anything like it.

“Oh,” she murmured, almost to herself, “it’s beautiful.”

“Do you recognize it?”

“Should I?”

He’d reached past her, pointing ahead, other hand on her opposite shoulder. She heard oiled leather sounds, metal strapped beneath the sleeve. She’d teased him before for wearing knives closer to skin than clothes. He’d only smiled.

“Do you see that?” he bent his head to speak, cheek rough against hers. She followed the outstretched line of his arm to a promontory beyond. “It’s where we slept last time. If we went up you’d see the char from the fire.”

“Are you sure?” though this was more rhetorical than anything. “It looks so different.”

“Nothing here stays the same with the passing of a season.” His words stirred the fine baby hairs at her temple. “Sometimes I can’t recognize the places I knew a year ago, or when I was a boy. If you come back again you may not know it.”

She left him and took a few steps forward. The grass parted in a drawn-out hush.

The flower she touched turned its face up expectantly. Its center was yolk-dark, petals fading outward, colored as hills where they met sky. Silky and dewed like skin from the bath. She glanced at the moisture rubbed between her fingers, put it to her bottom lip, inhaled in her mouth and nose a kind of watered honey. When she came last this had been deep in the earth. When she came next it would be again.

While she was thinking of it he had closed the gap between them. She turned and looked at him steadily; it was like looking at her own palm, or a glass. She’d known him for a face unlined save for laughter. He seemed like a boy, until you held his gaze. Impossible but for that to imagine him as anything other than what he was. To imagine him different.

She put out a hand. She traced his brow, jumping eyelid, flesh alongside the nose. Strictness of bone beneath. She pressed her damp thumb to his lips until they parted, then dragged down to his chin. Jadeite watched her from cool, half-closed eyes.

“I would know,” she said simply. There was nothing else to believe. “When I see you again. I’ll know.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The courtyard of Hikawa Jinja progressed well enough over the next few days that Michiru – dropping by one day to return a folding screen she’d borrowed for a performance, and to admire the budding cherry tree, already lovelier here than more famous blossom-viewing avenues in Tokyo – said that the place almost had a semblance of kemptness. Having previously decided civility was a virtue, right to cultivate in the new year, the priestess managed to thank her.

He’d been out at the time, and was in and out frequently, mundanely, enough that she could finally lay down the nagging fear that he was some kind of personalized hallucination. When she came home she relearned to look for her grandfather’s key in the bowl; otherwise, to listen later, for that same key slid in the door, muffled. The stove turned on, repaired faucet hissing, pages turned, pens scratched. All new old sounds to accustom herself to, her new old house.

Outside, she supposed he had others, people he went to see, friends, maybe returned brothers-in-arms, whose faces blurred at the edge of her memory. She asked him once if the prince knew, and received a reply in the affirmative, without detail. More than this she didn’t press; after all it wasn’t her business. In the abandoned honden she kept the hearth unlit. What she wanted to know the Fire would not tell her in any case.

She didn’t mention him when any of the others called, and when they infrequently dropped by for tea or errands as Michiru had, he was absent, though she never asked him to be. It was best. Of some matters Rei couldn’t imagine speaking to anyone; anyway she didn’t know what she would have said. They would ask questions, well meant. For now she had no answers.

One person she might have talked to. Some afternoon after Junin had gone out she dialed the number again. While the tone beeped flatly at her, she traced circles around the machine’s blinking light, spirals of increasing size. Impassively she examined the gray dust piled on her fingertip.

As usual Mamoru didn’t pick up. This time Rei left a message of her own.

“Answer your damn phone,” she told the receiver, then hung up to do the chores.

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With tea in the veins she went out to do a quick sweep of the path. It was past dawn but not late enough for the the morning fog to burn off, and passing by, the priestess saw the sacred tree in the front, tallest of all, spreading a silvery laden impression of canopy past the line of the shimenawa.

She’d hardly started sweeping before she was distracted by something else and had to abandon the broom against one of the pillars to inspect it. When she heard the screen door slam shut in the kitchen entrance across the courtyard, she called to him over her shoulder, without looking back.

As his footsteps approached she pointed up at the eaves. “There’s a – ”

“Pipe leak,” he finished, coming up beside her.

And indeed there was a dark vine-like stain working its way down the wall to the cracked stone foundation. Up close you could see the water trickling, slow, silent.

Rei chewed inside of her cheek. “I think the valve is loose, but I need to get close to see. Can you get a chair from the kitchen?”

When she turned she belatedly saw he’d been about to go for his run. Dressed in track pants and thermal, and already shaking his head.

“Those chairs are hardly holding themselves up, let alone you,” he took a step toward her. “Come on. I’ll give you a boost.”

She didn’t move, not right away. “I’ll need to be up there a while.”

Junin had busied himself rolling his sleeves. While pushing them past his elbows he glanced up at her. There might’ve been a ripple there, on that smooth surface, something like knowing, or challenge.

“I think I’ll manage,” was all he said. His hands held out. “Ready?”

She shrugged, unable to think of anything to say, kicked off her sandals and stepped into him. A second later Junin hoisted her high above his shoulder. Her knees locked to his chest, banded by his forearms.

“I have you,” his voice tinged with humor. “Relax.”

“I am relaxed,” she muttered, every operable muscle clenched. The position gave her a commanding view over the low-roofed shrine outbuildings; she found herself scanning them sharply for shoots of grass growing. Seeing none she took a breath. Gingerly she braced a hand on his back, reached across for the plate covering the leak’s source.

The valve behind had loosened as she’d suspected; it was several minutes checking the pipe until she found it. She felt a mutinous little spray when she twisted the part, set about turning it the other way. All simpler with wrench and flashlight, which of course she hadn’t brought. Without thought she let go of him to call flame to her hand.

After some time he asked, “Have you done this before?”

“It happens whenever the weather changes. After the first few times we decided it wasn’t worth the plumber’s bill.” She scraped at the lime residue with her thumbnail. “Why, you thought you’d be stuck like this all day?”

Junin made a noise down in his throat like a chuckle, not even sounding decently fatigued. It had crossed her mind he hadn’t shifted her weight once. He might’ve been furniture, if furniture chuckled. “I didn’t say I minded.”

Rei raised her eyebrows at nothing in particular, the surgical cavity dark in the shrine wall, copper vasculature gone blue inside. “Have _you_ done this before?”

“Not even close.”

“Didn’t you ever live in an old house?”

“A few houses, actually. Both here in Japan and abroad. My mom was U.S. army.” Sensing her confusion he added, “They move around a lot. You all right or do you need to be higher?”

“I’m fine.” She wriggled a bit to keep from smothering him. “Is…” she paused, thinking. Of how he jerked awake nights, the radial scar on his wrist. “Is that what you were too? Before?”

“Something like that,” he said lightly.

Rei ran her finger over the seal. It was tight, dry to touch.

“You don’t miss it.”

“I don’t?”

“Well – you’re here, right?”

Already it was out of her mouth when she realized she’d said it before, or very similar, that first day in the kitchen when he’d reached for her over the table. _You’re in my house now, aren’t you?_ It was like that but with the emphasis turned around, turned to something else altogether. She frowned at the length of pipe. “You don’t have to be, you know. You don’t – owe me anything.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute, so she supposed he hadn’t heard. She used her sleeve pulled over the heel of her palm to take off the last of the buildup; she doused the flame in her other hand. Without that pointed heat the air was cool with droplets of cloud heavy in the courtyard. Through her shirt, she felt each of his breaths measured on her stomach, warm as steam.

“All good?”

She’d gone motionless. “Yes – done.”

Rei reaffixed the rusty covering plate over the hole and satisfied herself the stain was already drying. Her palm flattened on the wall for a second, feeling the old arteries flow again without difficulty. He let his grip slack so she could slide down the length of him; her toes scrabbled first on his running shoes before finding the stone floor, cold through her cotton socks.

She looked up at him and said what came first to mind. “I never asked what you preferred, Junin or – Jude.”

“Are you saying you’d call me Jude?” He said it the long, unmanageable Western way, no vowel suffixed.

“No,” she confessed, blunt, “but you’re supposed to at least ask.”

He grinned down at her. “And you’re interested in doing what you’re supposed to, now?”

“Isn’t that the point of all this?”

His hands still loosely cupped her elbows as if she needed steadying though she stood perfectly straight on her own. Her own hands clasped awkward between them, rubbed in the guts of her house. She could have rested them on his chest, shoulders, it would have been easy. She could have stepped back and he wouldn’t have stepped forward, not yet. She didn’t.

“Thank you,” she told him, instead.

“It’s nothing.” So close it was plain he hadn’t shaved or showered yet, tiny gold glints along his jaw, an intimate smell of skin. She held herself there. “Consider it rent.”

“No – that’s not enough.” The priestess shook her head. “I know you came to help, but it has to be fair. That’s what I was going to tell you just now – we need to have rules.”

“Such as?”

“Like you not buying supplies, things for the shrine, or food, without telling me. You grew up here, so you know. That it isn’t right for a visitor, a guest, to...” she stopped.

Her eyes had gone over his shoulder. Down the colonnade, glittering beads seemed scattered about midair, as if someone had strung yards of necklaces between the columns. They moved impossibly, left and right, not falling. She gazed after these suspensions with vague disbelief. It took a moment to understand – mist attaching to spiderwebs. More and more, a crystalline pattern forming, where before she might’ve walked into it.

When her lips parted the air fell on them expectant as water.

“But I’m not your visitor, or guest,” he said into her muteness, “am I?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The wagashi shop her grandfather had always preferred was far up Asakusa way; she went, intending to send seasonal sweets to his aged chess-playing friends, for spring. The store was unfashionably old with its dark wood paneling and low door she had to duck through even with her modest height. It was out of the way and open at odd hours, which was why she didn’t expect to meet anyone she knew, and nearly dropped her handbag when she heard a familiar voice cry delightedly, “Rei!”

When she turned both Usagi and Ami were standing behind her. Ami had clearly come on her lunch break from a long shift; there were blue marks under her eyes and her skirt was wrinkled. Usagi had clearly come from lunch, which she was still actively consuming. There was an ice cream cone sticky in her fist and fudge on her nose.

They all embraced; Rei wiped the blonde’s face. “What are you both doing up here?”

“My program director always says this shop is the best,” explained Ami, “so I wanted to stop in, get her a box.”

“I came to meet Ami, since I hardly see her now, and keep her company,” said Usagi. “And I was hungry.”

They gathered at the counter while the shopkeeper brought out samples to try, pea cakes and ground-seed mochi, squares of agar like amber, roasted tea. It had been some time since the priestess had seen them, not since the new year.

They chatted over the crumbs on seashell dishes. She found out Ami had joined a cutting-edge clinical trial at NHO, which was occupying her nights and days, but she liked it; Usagi had convinced her parents to let her use their backyard for the wedding and was vastly enjoying conscripting Shingo into yardwork. Rei provided an edited version of the restoration of the shrine, how the pipes had stopped clanking (though that could be weather), the tiny white strawberries and nightshades growing in the garden.

As she looked at their faces she thought of the sugared tops of treats they’d giggled over as girls, rice flour dusting the books in their satchels, one light and two dark heads huddled. For a fleeting moment she thought of telling them both.

“And Rei,” continued the princess in her best admonishing voice, “Mamo-chan was saying you both keep missing each other about something...” as she said his name Rei saw her hand slip down over her belly under her jacket.

“What about?” inquired Ami. “Hikawa Jinja isn’t far from the hospital, he could just stop by. Oh, well, except – ” a hint of mischief crossed her usually grave face at the memory.

“He won’t,” answered Rei, smiling a little, too. “You know how Mamoru is in old places.”

Usagi grumbled inaudibly. “You are both the worst. It was literally one time.”

“My dears,” said the shopkeeper, “I’m sorry, but we _are_ closing...”

One by one they made their selections and boxed them up. But as Rei pulled out her wallet the shopkeeper said, “Ah! I forgot!” and bustled off to the back of the store. They waited finishing their tea, mouths gone cloying and dry. When the old woman returned she had a plate of wagashi, shaped like blossoms, barely pink.

“From the flowers at my son’s farm outside the city. They’re sakura-ko. I assume you know the story?” When Usagi and Ami shook their heads there was a harrumph. “Girls these days don’t learn anything useful. You never heard that old one about proud Sakura-ko and all her suitors? There were at least three, four. I don’t recall exactly.”

“Three or four,” mouthed Usagi, thrilled almost past speech. “That’s _amazing._ ”

“That’s a lot for one person to manage,” said the doctor, faintly stressed.

“And all of them rich and powerful,” the old woman dismissed their commentary, “but the girl was slippery as halibut, and didn’t care.”

Judging by her scrunched face the blonde didn’t care for the comparison. “And then?”

“Well, then, of course, a new suitor came. He was bold, enough to come only as himself, offering nothing else. And him, she recognized as her love.”

From her tone it could be reasonably guessed some calamity was looming. Ami asked with apprehension, “How long? What happened?”

The shopkeeper, who had clearly forgotten her store’s supposed hours of operation, opened her mouth to reply, but was beaten to it.

“She left him,” Rei laid a few bills on the counter, “before he could leave her.”

There was an outrage-filled pause.

Usagi burst out, “That’s an _awful_ ending!”

“Usa,” soothed Ami quickly, “it’s just a metaphor.” Her lucid eyes met Rei’s over the beribboned boxes. “For the blooms really, how they don’t last.”

The princess was not mollified. “Why did she have to do that? Rei, how did you guess?”

“I’ve been coming here since I was little, Usa,” she answered wryly. “I’ve heard that story a hundred times.”

Ami was still watching her.

“Now that you mention it, I feel like I’ve heard it before, too,” she said quietly. “Perhaps I’d just forgotten.”

“And I’d forgotten the register’s closed,” said the shopkeeper. “My treat, I suppose.”

Hustled outside they checked each others’ bags to ensure everyone had the right one, then Ami begged off with a patient she needed to return to. Usagi said she would go back with her to see if Mamoru might free up early. Rei embraced the princess first, careful of all the layers she was wearing, swallowing up her tiny form even though it was a mild day. Then Ami touched Rei’s arm. In her ear one of her oldest friends whispered, “Rei – it’s been so long. I’ll come to the shrine sometime soon. I promise.”

On reaching the shrine road here and there she noticed couples walking, talking animatedly, licking ice cream cones like Usagi’s. It was a fine afternoon for it, the willows sweeping down, faded green tendrils on windshields, bikes, mens’ collars. Two smiling teenagers ahead of her were posing under the trees taking pictures. She thought again of the story she’d listened to so many times: as a child she’d imagined the final suitor as ephemeral as one of her ghosts, and understood the girl who’d stolen from herself that happiness. Surely many of these people had heard the tale too, in their childhoods, at shops and shrines, from parents, library books, and still here they were, holding hands in the street, some older than her grandfather had been. Like so much else, she was learning, it was just a story. Changeable, changing, in the telling.

At the gate Rei sat on the bottom stair and opened her bag. She scissored out the sakura-ko between two fingers, put it between teeth and sensed the insubstantiality. The flavor was faintly bitter, powdery, fragrant, strange. Like eating a flower with all its petals and parts rather than food, something fragile to be admired not devoured. Held at a remove. In limpid sunshine she tilted up her head and bit, crushed it under her tongue, let it suffuse her breath. That perfume she still remembered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the stories of childhood it was easy to know if decisions taken were the right ones, especially when they were difficult. The bereaved family and ghost would respectfully part ways after Obon; the girl let go of her lover, lost her chance of joy. The people in stories moved along the fixed paths of stars, looking no other direction. They were replete with that rightness. She had grown up hungry for the same and knowing she needed but a chance to prove her own certainty.

In time, at that time – his ashes darkening the wind, the two girls in fukus running up chattering like sparrows, from their conspicuous awe – gradually, she understood. She was the first to do it. Neither of them yet had. What was strange was that it was an act which from her had required no more decision than breathing. She went home at night to the shrine with the smell of burnt skin on her own.

She remembered that in the shower the water swirled gray around the spiral of the drain. Afterward she sat dripping-haired in the futon to comb the knots from her hair. The fear and rage and bile had drained from her, leaving her quiet. It struck her then with a suddenness, how young he had looked, not like someone different from her at all.

She didn’t know him then, but at times she looked in the Fire, or closed her eyes, and inexplicably he was there. There wasn’t anything to say; she had gotten her chance, chosen. She had stolen from herself not knowing. Had lost nothing she could name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was late afternoon when she came inside and the sun was striping tartly apricot across the kitchen floor. Rei called out she was home but heard no response, though she’d seen his motorbike parked in front. In the hallway she slipped off her heels and let them fall, stretching the balls of her feet indulgently; she began to shrug out of her clinging light sweater, loosening the mother-of-pearl buttons as she went. As she neared her old room, his room, she slowed, seeing the door was cracked open.

When she went in he didn’t stir from the futon. Junin slept on his back, one arm tucked under his nape, the other tossed across his front; the length of his legs extended several centimeters past the rumpled sheets’ edge. A book propped on his chest bore an English title that made little sense to her. She knelt by his head, suddenly concerned he might be feverish, or taken ill. He wasn’t sweating, nor ashen. The priestess touched his forehead and found the temperature not dissimilar to her own.

Under her palm his eyebrows bristled, permanently arched where hers ran like the ties of train tracks. She felt fine sun-lines there that she couldn’t see. Against her fingers his hair was dense, grown now slightly off the scalp, lightened more from working outdoors. She took back her hand, put it in her lap. From time to time it still startled her, to be able to look at him like this, unrationed. Even here at rest, she thought there was control in his features, a kind of ruthless calm she’d never been able to help responding to.

“I know you’re awake,” Rei told him, voice soft. He had been since she entered the room. “Don’t say anything.”

He didn’t. His chest rose and fell, consistent. His sleeve had ridden up, and she saw underneath the skin was paler, stretched over bunched muscle.

She kept her voice at a whisper, in mulish defiance of logic. “What I said, the other day about, being fair. I don’t want debt between us. I told you you don’t owe me because of...of what you did.” She bit her lip before saying it. “So if that’s why you’re here, I...”

In the frame of the window she saw the cherry tree was motionless, as if it were painted on silk stretched for a screen, or a photograph hung on the wall.

“I don’t want forgiveness, or to – _forget_ ,” she swallowed hard. “But it has to – we have to be even. For – this to work.”

His features were so still, for a moment she thought she’d misread, that he really was asleep. Then she looked again, and saw she’d been right.

All her recklessness depleted, Rei stood, heart thudding in her chest. Somewhat dazed, she looked around at what had been her girlhood room. The light coming through was haze, filtering particles, rose gold. Nothing of it had really changed though she’d slept here more than twenty years. It had occurred to her, not for the first time, that in here she had dreamt of him each way you could dream of another person. If he had Mamoru’s gift he would’ve sensed himself in the walls, floors. Salt in the mats.

Since the pipe leak she had been thinking about it, and now she recognized the missing piece, fallen late into place. There was no way for him to be a visitor, a guest, suitor-ghost or anything so temporary. The girl who dreamt of him, carried his ashes past the threshold, had brought him in this room and house; the woman she had become hadn’t even been surprised when he returned as if called to it. You couldn’t be surprised by what was in you, interstices. Somewhere she had always known him.

When she blinked she was already outside the room lacking any awareness of how she had gotten there. Her feet had carried her without volition. As Rei leaned against the wall her hands traveled as if for necessity up and down her arms, narrowed shoulders, the slight camisole she’d slipped on under her sweater, now falling off. She was holding herself like she had taken a chill but that wasn’t it, she had only wanted to hold something. She had wanted the physical sensation of what it was like, being held.

Her forehead rested on the doorjamb. She let her eyelids fall in the flaring sun.

“And, Junin,” when she touched her mouth it was upturned, shaky. She knew he could, would hear her. “Your book is upside-down.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In less than a week the midspring weather had rapidly turned so fine it dried the last melt rivuleting between the shingles and cobbles. The cherry tree was loaded with blossoms and pea plants heavy, a natal film over them like the pearled stuff in eggs.

They (Rei) decided to strip the bedding and mats. For the purpose they (Junin) hauled from the shed a grand hinoki bathtub at least a quarter century unused. She piled her hair on her head, put on an ancient cotton sundress, and being smaller, stood barefoot on the futons while he poured bucketfuls of astringent soap and hot water. As the level rose the futons floated up like squid, treaded down without ceremony, loosening old dirt.

They washed everything in turns and wiped down the tatami; they strung cords in zigzagged lines between the trees hemming the courtyard; they draped it all under noon sky. By the end he and she were damp, herb-scented, breathing heavily.

It was a task she’d always secretly enjoyed because it felt so assertively a riddance of winter. Though they were exhausted under her ribs was lightness. They ordered zaru udon, ravenous. The restaurant threw in a beer, at which she made a disdainful moue, and he opened on the edge of the stairs. They ate straight from the clamshells. When her dipping sauce ran out she absently plucked the last cup from his container.

They lingered there a while after, full, sitting among grease-paper carcasses. A breeze rustled through the linens, curtaining the courtyard like imperial banners, or noren in the entryways of restaurants. She felt it whisper across her face, speaking of summer.

He leaned back onto his elbows on the steps. “Ever thought about moving that inside?”

“What?” she followed his gaze. “The tub? No.”

“You’d use it, wouldn’t you?”

“I already have a tub.”

“Which you spend many hours in,” he pointed out idly. “This one seems pretty sturdy.”

“It won’t fit, it’s too big,” she dismissed. “Too decadent. For a shrine.”

Junin raised the bottle, drained the neck down. “More rules?”

Her lashes moved in a languid blink. “They’re important.”

There were wet marks on his shirt from her reaching up to take his shoulders for balance on the futons. She saw it was the same one he’d been wearing that day she went in to him, sleeping, or not. He hadn’t said anything. Her handprints, already drying.

Rei ran her tongue over her bottom lip, tasting a sheen of sesame, grained salt.

“What are you doing the rest of the day?” she said.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw condensation sparkling, another swig. “Isn’t that your call?”

“No, I meant, we can’t beat these until they dry, tomorrow. So...if you’ve other plans, to go out, or…”

She’d been gesturing obscurely at the hanging sheets and futons, tatami. Junin reached up and caught her fluttering hand. Her eyes were open and clear; he moved in her line of sight. He moved so she could watch him, his fingers taking her, deliberate.

“I’m all yours,” he said.

Through the branches of cedars overhead the sun was sieved and scattered its light all about the courtyard. The heat kept, in the coal-glint hair crowning her head, her neck and bare shoulders, the stone under them. His thumb spreading open her palm.

Behind her eyes, the same burn. She let them fall closed a moment.

“All right,” she said eventually. She waited until she was sure of herself. “All right – what should we do?”

For a few seconds Junin stayed quiet, and when she looked, in profile his expression was contemplative.

“Anything,” he said. “Whatever you want. Tell me what you like doing.”

Her shoulder lifted, dropped. “Taking baths.”

The slow of his smile before he wrapped it around the bottle, tipped up, back. “There’s an idea.”

“Maybe, later,” she watched his Adam’s apple lurch over the mouthful he’d just swallowed. Then she went on, stupidly pleased. “I read. I meditate. They’re normal things. It’s not a secret, what I like to do.”

“By yourself,” there was husk in his voice, beer down the wrong pipe. “What about with friends?”

Her fingers drifted to her nape, but her hair was already pulled off it. “Order in. Watch old anime.”

“With me?”

“I don’t know what I like, with you,” said Rei softly. “We haven’t done anything yet.”

There were hardly any sounds in the courtyard, only traffic distantly sensed from the road, crows muttering somewhere, the long deep exhalations of trees. There were only the things they were saying, thought the priestess, reverberating like the bell in the haiden, remaking the air.

Junin's tone, gentle. “What is it we’re doing now?”

The light moved coy over the longitude of his arms and legs, his eyes which he didn’t bother shading as he looked out, beside her. She might have taken her hand from his, might have taken his face, turned it up to hers. All possibilities. But she had waited this long already. They both had.

“I don’t know,” she repeated. Her chin propped on her unheld hand, she looked out, too. “But I like it.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Love And Sleep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16557836) by [elianthos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elianthos/pseuds/elianthos)




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